Redemption (28 page)

“Hey, what’s Cole doing tonight?” Anika caught Ashley’s eye and stirred the whipped cream into her drink.

“The usual. Spoiled by Grandma from seven to eight. Spoiled by Grandpa from eight to nine.” She smiled, but her eyes felt soaked in a sadness she didn’t quite understand. “His favorite kind of night.”

Anika nodded and stared at the band. “I should be home practicing. I’ll never be famous if I spend every night listening to someone else make music.”

She launched into a comparison of off-Broadway musicals versus Broadway ones, and though Billie was immediately caught up in the interchange, trading ambiguous terms and meaningless opinions, Ashley wasn’t in the mood.

Melody Blues was one of her favorite local bands, and The Coffee House was a place that always seemed to expand her creativity. Normally, a night like this would leave her feeling she could paint the Sistine Chapel in an hour.

But tonight was different.

In fact, the last four times they’d gone out—whether here or dancing at Kaverns—she had left feeling empty and sad. As if something was missing from life, something she couldn’t put into words. It wasn’t Cole—although the fact that he had more fun spending a night with her parents than staying with her didn’t help her feelings any.

It was deeper, far down inside her heart, as if she had a hole nothing could fill.

“You okay?” There was a break in the conversation, and Billie touched her elbow, her forehead wrinkled in concern. “You don’t seem like yourself tonight.”

Ashley shrugged. “I just don’t feel right.”

Anika leaned back in her chair, her head angled curiously. “There’s a flu going around.”

“No, it’s not that.”

Understanding dawned on Anika’s face. “Paris?”

Ashley stirred her coffee and felt the sting of tears. Because of Paris, she was sometimes seized by moments when she wanted to crawl into a hole in the basement of her heart where no one could find her—not even these, her closest friends. But Paris wasn’t the problem tonight. “I don’t know what it is.”

Melody Blues took a break, and Billie motioned to the other side of the coffee house. “Want to browse?”

Half the building was a bookstore, an eclectic mix of new and used tomes—mostly offbeat fiction, artsy how-to books, and various New Age titles. Customers drifted from one side to the other, finding books, taking them to the café, poring over them while sipping coffee and listening to music late into the night. Book purchases could be made until the two o’clock closing time.

Ashley shook her head. “You go ahead.” Her friends finished their drinks and pushed back from the table. Ashley knew they might spend an hour or more looking at books, but that was okay. She welcomed the time alone.

A couple decked out in a kind of nouveau-hippie look—tie-dyed shirts, flowing glass beads, and leather-fringed pants—walked past and flashed her the peace symbol. She returned the same and smiled. Her parents would be deeply concerned to know she spent as much time as she did here, and they would be aghast to know she brought Cole sometimes. They were so straight, so—she searched for a word and thought of a hippie-era one her friends liked to use.

Establishment.

That was it. Everything about her family was establishment. Especially their brand of religion—the kind of white-bread, narrow-minded, Bible-bound faith that Ashley had come to despise. She couldn’t understand why Kari still bought into it.

Maybe that’s what bothered her the most. The fact that her parents’ faith seemed to have turned Kari into a robot.

When she and Kari were younger, Kari had been bigger than life to Ashley. Her older sister, beautiful and confident, dating easily the best-looking guy in all of Bloomington—at least that was how Ashley had seen Ryan Taylor back then.

When they were kids it all seemed so easy. They went to church and believed, and in return God took care of them and made sure everything worked out the way it was supposed to.

Paris had changed her thinking on that one—that and watching her sister give up any semblance of pride just to stick to some archaic rule about staying married no matter what.

Ashley stared at the melting whipped cream in her drink and swirled it slowly. Could God really expect that kind of devotion? Even when Kari’s husband was an unfaithful jerk?

Bells on the front door jangled, and Ashley looked up. As she did, her heart skipped a beat, and she had to set her cup down to keep from spilling its contents.

Landon Blake?

What in the world was he doing at an artsy cave like The Coffee House on a Saturday night? And dressed in his firefighter’s uniform, no less.

He didn’t see her as he made his way between several tables to the take-out counter and ordered a drink.

Landon Blake . . . Ashley’s heart grew instantly softer. If Ryan Taylor was the best-looking guy in Bloomington, second place—without a doubt—belonged to the boy who had chased her since the first day of middle school. The boy who’d gone off to Texas to become a veterinarian—until he spent a semester of his junior year volunteering for the fire department.

Something must have happened that year, because he came home from college right afterward. He abandoned his dream of working with animals and instead joined the City of Bloomington Fire Department.

Other than that, little had changed about Landon.

He was still as gorgeous as ever, still a little too religious for her taste, still attending the big church across town and, according to everyone who knew him, still carrying a quiet torch for Ashley Baxter.

They’d been in the same Sunday school class when they were kids, back when his family attended Clear Creek Community Church. Every summer they had gone to the same camp on the same church bus and shared the same friends. All her life, in fact, everyone had expected her to marry Landon one day.

And all her life she’d been determined to prove them wrong.

There had to be more to life than the predictability of spending a lifetime with someone like Landon. Someone with whom she’d rarely have a surprising moment. The wildest thing he ever did was switch career goals halfway through college. Since then he’d been as predictable as winter. She could never be interested in Landon.

At least that’s what she told her parents.

The truth was something she rarely admitted even to herself.

The summer after his first year of college, Landon Blake had come home for two months, and Ashley had caught herself doing the very thing she’d promised never to do.

She was falling in love with him.

Just as her mother and father and everyone who knew them always thought she would, that summer she fell hard for the boy who’d always been there for her.

Ashley studied him now. Wasn’t that the reason she’d gone to Paris in the first place, running scared from everything predictable and ordinary to a country where she could be someone no one knew? Wasn’t that why she’d traded her safety and security for a chance to paint a masterpiece by starlight or stay up all night listening to the lap of a lake against foreign soil?

Still, the question remained.

If she’d been willing to work that hard to keep herself from falling for Landon, why now—years from those church-camp days—was her heart still moved by the sight of him?

She watched him order, watched the way the girl behind the counter blushed in his presence, and took in the fact that he had to be every bit of six feet four inches now. She saw it all as she waited for the inevitable.

He would see her. He always did.

Ever since their early teenage years, it hadn’t mattered if they were in church or a crowded cafeteria or at opposite sides of a local supermarket. If Landon Blake entered a place where Ashley Baxter was, he would find her.

Landon leaned against the counter and waited for the girl to fill his order. He slipped one hand casually into his pocket, and Ashley wondered if he bought coffee here often and whether he knew she was a regular. He turned and leaned against the counter, and almost immediately his eyes found hers.

Ashley hated the way her palms grew sweaty under his slow, easy smile. He made his way toward her, unrushed, moving with the grace of an athlete. His eyes held hers. When he reached her table, he sat down and looked at her for a long while before talking.

“Hi.” He still had the same dimples that had set him apart as a schoolboy.

“Landon.” She returned his smile. “What brings you here?”

“Coffee.” He cocked his head and, though his tone was light, he looked further into her eyes than she was comfortable with. “Of course, if I’d known you were here, I would’ve come sooner.”

“Somehow I believe you.” She leaned her forearms on the table and looked into the bookstore, wondering whether Anika and Billie had spotted him. Though she and Landon lived in the same town, they ran in completely different circles. He was straightforward and good, the type who divided his time equally between church, the gym, and the fire station.

Ashley didn’t spend time in any of those places, so though he’d been back home for more than two years, she could count on one hand the number of times they’d actually run into each other.

“Where’s Cole?”

A part of her heart was touched that he remembered her son’s name. He’d seen the boy only once—when she’d had him dedicated at an evening church service just after his first birthday. Landon had heard about it from her parents and showed up with a present, an engraved picture frame that still sat on Cole’s nightstand.

“With my parents. He likes it there.”

He leaned back in his chair. “How long’s it been, Ash?”

She thought about that for a moment. “A year at least.”

He nodded, and the faraway look in his eyes told her he remembered their last meeting as if it were yesterday. “So . . . what’s new?”

Ashley doubted that was the question he wanted to ask. The real question, the unspoken one, hung around them like a cloak, and she decided not to make him guess. “I’m not seeing anyone, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “I’m not either.”

The girl from behind the counter placed a steaming drink on the take-out shelf and searched the room. Ashley gestured toward the cash register, leaned close, and whispered, “Your admirer has your drink ready.”

“My admir—”

He turned, and the girl gave him a cutesy-type wave. Ashley whispered again. “That one.”

Landon turned to her again and settled into his chair, making no effort to retrieve his coffee. After a while he crossed his arms, his eyes never leaving hers. “May I call you sometime?”

Her heart rate sped up, and she worked to look indifferent. “Why?”

“Relax, Ashley.” He chuckled and shook his head. “I’m not asking you to marry me. Just talk a little, catch up on the years.”

Her better sense screamed at her to say no, to tell him to leave her alone and let his feelings for her die. But being in his presence now was more enjoyable than she liked to admit, and she let her gaze fall to her hands. What harm could there be in talking to him now and then? She lifted her eyes and met his. “I live on my own now.”

He raised his eyebrows, and a slow grin worked its way across his face. “Call me crazy, but the way you said that almost makes me think you’re saying yes.”

A giggle slipped from between her lips, and she silently scolded herself. Why was she doing this—leading him to believe there was any hope? “Okay.” She reached into her oversized crocheted handbag, grabbed a pen, and scribbled her phone number on a napkin. She dropped her chin, gazed up at him, and slid the napkin across the table. “You can call.”

He took the paper, folded it, and slipped it into his wallet. Then he studied her for another moment and tapped his finger on the table two quick times. “Good seeing you, Ash.”

She leaned close and whispered once more. “Your coffee’s getting cold.”

He left then, moving back to the counter as easily as he’d come, taking his drink and looking at her over his shoulder once more before leaving.

The moment he was gone, she silently cursed herself for giving in.
What’s wrong with me?
Were his looks that hard to resist? She dried her palms on her jeans and knew the answer. Forget the fact that they were as different as night from day. Something about him was flat-out irresistible.

That’s why she had felt compelled to go as far as Paris to get away from him.

But where could it possibly lead? Landon was everything she was not. Stable and steady, the type of guy who deserved a—what did her mother call it?—a Proverbs 31 woman, someone who would honor him and make him proud and sit by his side at church.

Quite simply, Landon was the marrying type, and she was not.

Something occurred to her then, a thought that had irritated the delicate places in her soul a handful of times since she’d been back in the States. It wouldn’t be that hard to lose Landon if she wanted to. He didn’t know about what happened in Paris.

If he did, he would toss her phone number in the nearest trash bin.

In fact, he wouldn’t have asked for it in the first place.

Chapter Twenty

Kari’s legs shook as Ryan led her back to the beach chairs by the fire. He slid his chair closer to hers so that when they sat, their legs and arms touched. Heat from the fire warmed Kari’s freezing legs, but it was nothing compared to the way Ryan’s nearness warmed her body.

“Cold?”

She shook her head. “I’m okay.” It was partly true. She could survive the falling temperatures. It was the story he wanted to share that concerned her.

“I’ve looked for a way to talk about this ever since I got hurt.” Ryan gazed out at the silvery reflection of moonlight on the water. “We should have done it a long time ago, but . . . I don’t know. I’m not sure exactly what happened.” He looked at her. “Obviously you walked away believing something that wasn’t true.”

Her mind swirled with possibilities, trying to understand what he was saying. The events of that day were perfectly clear, weren’t they? The nurses at the hospital had confirmed it. “I . . . I guess I don’t know what you mean.”

“Let’s do this.” There was a softening in his features, and she saw that whatever the misunderstanding, he didn’t hold it against her. “You tell me what you think happened, how you remember the day I got hurt and . . . everything that followed it.”